June 24th, 2019

Okay, this is going to sound strange to you, but so far, my favourite part of being retired is the weekends.

"What?" I hear you say, "Every day is like the weekend to you now. You are retired!"

Well, yes I am.  But Tim is not.  Which means that while I am doing, pretty much as I please all day, Tim is still hard at work all day, every day, Monday through Friday.  Poor Tim.  Makes me feel a little guilty sometimes. 

So, during the week  while Tim is slaving away in front of his many computer screens and phone calls, I have my stuff going on, which is primarily,  taking care of hearth and home.  And laundry.  There is always a lot of laundry.   And cleaning.  Endless cleaning.  And cooking. And grocery shopping. And some small minor yard work.  What else do I do all day?  Errands.  Somehow there are always a thousand small errands to run.  The grocery store, the post office or the drugstore.  Maybe a birthday card to pick up, oh we need envelopes, dang, I ran out of laundry soap. And don't even start thinking about any holidays!

But here's the thing.  The reason why weekends are especially delicious now.  Back when I was working full time, which was most of my adult life, All of that other stuff?  Yeah, it got done on the weekends.  I'm sure the same is true for all of you.  See if this doesn't sound at least a little bit familiar.

Monday through Friday we were up and out early in the day doing our jobs, earning our paychecks. At the end of the day we arrived home in time to  prepare, eat and clean up from dinner.  But  oh yeah, it's important to get some exercise in there too.  For Tim it was usually a trip to the gym. For me it was more likely one of the marathon walks that Marsha and I did every single night.  And afterwards, it might be a good night to mow  the lawn, or weed the gardens, or trim the shrubs or wash the cars. Perhaps  it was wintertime and then there waws almost always something that needed shoveling.

Afterwards usually we had just enough energy after a full day of work and exercise and dinner  and outside chores to get one thing on the inside  gotta-do list accomplished.   One small thing, like, perhaps, one load of wash.  And then we would just kind of keel over with a crash before getting up and doing the same thing the next day.   The thing is,  we loved our jobs too.  We enjoyed what we did to earn a living and we enjoyed the people that we spent our work days with.  But as Monday turned into Tuesday into Wednesday and the weekend drew near, we longed for the weekends just like everyone else.

Finally the weekend arrived.  Hurrah!  And then that's when our other jobs started.  The rest of everything that needs doing. And it's a long dang list.  BUT it's not healthy to be all work and no play, so we were also trying to balance out the gotta-do's with the fun-to-do's.  It's important to have that down time. 

Ultimately we would end up spending one day of the weekend running around like crazy people trying to squeeze in every single thing that needed to be done so that the other day could be spent doing something fun, getting out of the house, up into the mountains maybe, or spending the day with friends, going to the movies or playing golf or......anything besides obligation.

But the push to get the weekend chores done - meaning everything that didn't get done during the week but still has to get done and make it a point to do something fun on the weekends to became ALMOST another obligation.  The obligation to find balance, the obligation to fit a weeks worth of chores into one day, the obligation to do the maintenance required to have healthy relationships, to re-connect with each other and the people we care about.  And, sometimes,  it was exhausting.

The weekends were only marginally different from the week days in all honesty.

But now it's different.  Now allllllll of that other stuff is already done.  The house is clean, the laundry is done, the errands are run and yard is taken care of and the weekends are now ours to do with as we please.

We can sleep late, if we wish.  We can go out to breakfast.  We can go away for the entire weekend if we want to do so.    The weekends are ours.  Both days of it.  We can stay home and veg or we can go out and play.  

I find that we move at a slower pace on the weekends now. There is no rushing around.  By Monday, we are more rested and prepared for the coming week. In short, I think that we are both enjoying my retirement and it's a beautiful thing.  When the day comes that Tim also retires, we are going to enjoy that even more ;)

When this Friday rolls around I'll be all:

​Retirement. Yup, I recommend it.